Sep 26

Sep 26 Matrix

Author: Lauren Groff
Publisher: Reiverhead
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease.

At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie's vision be bulwark enough?

Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff's new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.

TL;DR Review

Matrix is a feast of language with a premise you can’t help but love. It’s really different from Groff’s other work, and it’s not my favorite, but I liked and appreciated it a lot.

For you if: You liked both Wolf Hall and Hamnet.

Full Review

“It is because this prayer is enclosed within the chapel, she sees, not despite the enclosure, that it becomes potent enough to be heard. Perhaps the song of a bird in a chamber is more precious than the wild bird’s because the chamber itself makes it so. Perhaps the free air that gives the wild bird its better song in fact limits the reach of its prayer. So small, this understanding. So remarkably tiny. Still, it might be enough to live for.”

As the latest from Lauren Groff and her first novel since Fates and Furies, Matrix is one of the most anticipated books of the fall and longlisted for the National Book Award. I liked it a lot and admired it even more.

The novel’s main character is Marie de France, a real-life poet from the 12th century about whom virtually nothing is actually known. Groff takes a few of modern-day historians’ hints and theories and reimagines Marie as a smart, fierce, protective, headstrong lesbian who becomes a prioress at an abbey and builds a massive, self-sufficient community of exclusively women out of nothing. The book takes us from her early days at the abbey through her death in old age, with all her writings, divine visions, and ferocity in between.

What stands out most for Matrix are the words themselves. The prose flows and sings and is really, truly beautiful. In that way, it reminded me of Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. That’s what I loved most. The story, however, is more like that of Wolf Hall; a series of “and then, and then, and then” events strung together, with the focus more on the arc of the main character’s life than with any central conflict or plot. That may not be for everyone; I struggled a bit with the story in the middle, personally, but that gorgeous prose never lost me.

Either way, I can’t help but appreciate the feat of this novel and what Groff built out of virtually nothing. I would be absolutely shocked if this doesn’t get nominated for the Women’s Prize next year; it’s just their type.